


Recognition

by roselightsaber



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Jedha Orphanage Tragedy Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9384890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselightsaber/pseuds/roselightsaber





	1. Chapter 1

When Baze gets back from his first off-world mission, he isn’t the same. Chirrut feels it instantly, struck with startled grief as if he’d walked off the ship missing a limb. He is positively drenched in darkness; until the other walks right into his arms he isn’t convinced he’s Baze at all, but there’s no mistaking the way he holds him tightly, the scent of skin and metal. But the Force around him is nearly unrecognizable, dark and desperate where it was once hopeful. There had always been a deep sadness in Baze, but this was something else. He held onto Chirrut tightly, clinging to something even Chirrut couldn’t identify.

“What _happened_ , Baze?”

“Just a job,” He answers with forced steadiness. Then, as if as a weak excuse for his obvious despondency, adds, “I missed you.”

“You – you told me you were going to scavenge, Baze.” His voice is too small for him, too tinged with hesitance that seems to weigh down his tongue. He always speaks so easily with Baze. Now he speaks like he’s not sure who he’s talking to.

“I did some of that. But the kids…” Baze tries to force out some positivity. He looks over toward the temple, toward the orphanage, hands still at Chirrut’s waist as if afraid he might lose him if he goes too far. Laying his eyes on the building seemed to lighten the darkness a little, and somehow that scares Chirrut even more. “I’ll – be bringing money more steadily now. Make sure they’re eating well when I’m not here, okay? We won’t have to worry so much.”

Chirrut remembers teenage Baze suddenly. Surrounded by bright energy but with a core of that same darkness underneath, a scar left behind when he’d had to carve his own survival out of the cruel surface of Jedha. He and Chirrut sat on Baze’s bed at sixteen, years into his stay at the temple, and he told him what he’d had to do – that he’d stolen, scammed, and, just once, killed for the means to survive. He’d been hired by one of the many gangs in town at just fourteen to assassinate a rival crime lord. He was undetectable, just looked like a gangly kid – the guy never saw it coming. Baze told himself then that he didn’t think it would hurt so much. The man he’d killed was no good, anyway; Baze had seen him shaking down vendors for money, threatening families in NiJedha. He told Chirrut, but he told him too that it _did_ hurt, more than he thought possible. And then he asked, tearfully, if Chirrut would still be his friend. _I didn’t want to,_ he whispered to him, _I had to. Mother was so sick, and they promised she’d be okay if I just–_

It never crossed Chirrut’s mind to do anything but forgive him, even if he wasn’t the one from whom Baze needed absolution. Now he felt that same lurching sensation, though, that Baze had done _something_ he didn’t want to tell him. Not for his mother this time, but once again for his family. For those children he identified with too closely, the kids he tried his best to save from the same life on the street he’d had. They were orphans in name only, Chirrut had told him once, with a gentle smile he couldn’t presently muster. Baze was a good father. The other assured Chirrut that he was too.

Now Chirrut clutches at his hands and tries to see through the fog of darkness to the Baze he knows and loves. “Love, you – you’ve been through something, I can tell.”

“I know you can,” He whispers, voice strained. “But I’m going to take care of you, and the children, and our home no matter what.”

“I won’t try to stop you. But I need to know.”

Baze thinks there’s almost something quaint about just how much of a lie that is. “I’ll tell you later.”


	2. Chapter 2

Baze is still awake when Chirrut returns to their shared room. There’s a candle burning; he can smell it, feel the faint warmth. The room has illumination panels but there’s something charming about it; Chirrut can’t see anymore but he understands the nostalgic value just the same. He remembers seeing a soft flame in the distance as a child – before his vision had gone – and had followed it down the winding alleys of NiJedha to a scavenged little shelter, little more than a few blankets tucked into an alcove, albeit appointed with the largest blaster Chirrut had ever seen leaning against the wall. He’d followed it to Baze, a lanky teenager, still reeling from the loss of what little he’d had in his life. The first of many orphans he’d bring into the temple.

Now they raised those children together, doing odd jobs around Jedha, sometimes begging outright. Chirrut is as self-sufficient as any but if playing as a frail blind man on a street corner can bring in a few more credits to make sure the little ones are fed and warm, it’s not such a bad lie. He understands the willingness to do less than savory things to bring in money to the temple, but this is something else, around Baze. This is the unmistakable darkness of death. He sits next to him without a word, and Baze – the oddly drained, dark spot where Baze as Chirrut knows him should be – leans on his shoulder without hesitation.

“I know you don’t approve,” He starts, caution weighing down each word, slowing down his thoughts. “But we can’t keep living on scraps. If we had to take in even just one more child tomorrow, where would we be? Where would _they_ be?”

“We’ve always found a way, Baze.” He swallows, coiling an arm around his shoulders. “Forget about my approval. You don’t like this either. It’s eating you alive.”

“Killing for money isn’t known to be enriching for the soul.”

The matter-of-fact way he says it cuts through Chirrut, an ice-cold knife in his gut. “Baze – you–”

“It’s not the first time. You know that.” There’s no affect to his voice. Chirrut has no idea how to read this absence of feeling. “They’re slavers,” He adds, and Chirrut is, in some twisted way, relieved for the pang of anguish in his tone. At least he’s sure he still feels something. “Kidnappers. Selling children, some of them probably from Jedha. They deserve it – it’s not as though I’m throwing out my morals just for money.”

“You don’t have to do this, Baze. We have connections here, we could–”

“Chirrut, love…” All that darkness but there’s still such warmth in the simple pet name, so rarely uttered aloud. “I can’t leave them now. Not after seeing–” His words falter, and _there_  it is, that darkness – the pain of killing is there, too, but that isn’t the true source. “Not after seeing what it’s like out there.”

Baze is too brave – he always has been. Chirrut shudders at the thought of what he’s seen, what he’s done. “You’re a good man, Baze Malbus.” He takes his hand knowing full well that he couldn’t stop him, unsure if he even wants to. “Let me come with you. I can fight, we could–”

“ _No_. It’s too dangerous.”

“I can fight. And the Force will protect us.”

“The _Force_ –” He bites back something Chirrut can’t even guess at. “The Force isn’t always enough, Chirrut.”

Chirrut is taken aback. It’s bad enough having his sensory recognition of the other so muddled, but to hear him even insinuate doubt in the Force shakes him to his core all over again. “You don’t mean that.”

“I mean to say–” He sighs, and Chirrut can feel his pain, echoing in the hollow energy around him. “I only mean to say that you’d be safest here. And I can’t lose you. Everything else, maybe.” He finally puts on a faint smile, and little tendrils of the Baze that Chirrut knows struggle to unfurl out of the darkness. He touches his partner’s face, tries to soak in what he can of his forced levity. “But not you.”

“What will you do once–” _Once they’re dead_. It seems too cold to say even of these vile creatures. “What happens once the slavers are dealt with?”

“The children who have families will go back to them. Those that don’t – ah, well, it is safe here, if a little crowded. And we’d be able to afford it, after all is said and done.”

 _This_  is Baze, familiar and warm, or at least trying to climb out of the darkness back to him. A man too gentle for the life he’s been handed. Too kind to do what he does to survive, to have his faith tested violently, to have so much ripped away from him. Chirrut’s fingertips ghost over his lips, up to the corners of his eyes where lines are beginning to grow deeper. “How long?”

“It could be a while,” He answers evasively, and Chirrut doesn’t push him on it. There’s nothing to be gained from dragging the painful truth from him.”But I’ll come home to you as often as I can. Maybe bringing you some more little ones. You’ll be too busy fawning over them to miss me.” Another smile, sincere though bittersweet, and he brings both of Chirrut’s hands to his face to feel it.

“I couldn’t see you.” He silences the knee-jerk joke about to escape Baze’s lips with one finger. “It was _terrifying_ , Baze. Your place in the Force felt empty. It still isn’t right – it still doesn’t feel like you.”

To this he frowns deeply. “Because I killed them.”

“Because you killed, and because you saw such terrible things, and…” He slides his hands back down Baze’s cheeks. “I used to be able to feel your faith. The way you touched the Force. I can’t feel it now.”

There is the longest silence imaginable, and Chirrut tries to focus on that faint, flickering flame of Baze’s convictions, once so strong he felt he could reach out and touch it. Chirrut is expecting explanation, reassurance, words chosen just so in the intervening quiet. Instead, he only hears. “I’m sorry, love,” as Baze pulls him into an embrace.


End file.
